Attempting to seriously rate/review every single game I've played - Day 1:
I rolled the dice and got Yoku's Island Express, a game which I played to 100% completion not too long ago, so thankfully my thoughts on this game are still relatively fresh in my mind.

This is a charming little indie pinball game with Metroidvania elements, or a Metroidvania with pinball elements if you prefer. It looks great, sounds great, and rarely falls into the trap that many pinball games do of getting you to do the same ludicrously precise shot over and over again. You might expect the pinball to get in the way of the exploration but I found that it wasn't usually an issue, and the map is small enough that even the lack of a more robust fast travel system isn't a huge problem.

There are some spots where the game can feel a little unpolished, mostly just strange stuff on the map screen and a couple of weird physics interactions, but otherwise this doesn't feel like an indie game at all.

It's not particularly long, only taking me around 10 hours to see everything in it, but it's worth the price and an easy recommendation from me.

Reviewed on Jan 10, 2024


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